Watching City Hall #405 (1-6-06)
Comcast’s ‘City Desk News Hour’ a fuckin’ joke
Watching City Hall #416
(down to one honest comment in 30 minutes)
The honest comment came (of course) from Rachel Gordon. As a truly dip-shit, Barbara Taylor ranted on about how Aaron Peskin & Chris Daly controlled all of the members of the Board (this will be big news to Sean Elsbernd & Bevan Dufty - it had been a solid 10 minutes of insulting the Board for messing up the City) … Gordon offered that perhaps: “we should remember that the Mayor controls over 99% of the City’s budget of 5.3 billion dollars” …
The effect of her line was amazing
Luckily Joel Bernstein had a long shot going and we all got to watch Andy Ross’s dentures fall to the floor. I mean, with 3 Chronicle reporters out of the 5 members of the panel, a flat-lining Taylor and a chubbily cute, Marisa Lagos from the Examiner giving one poorly researched book report after another, they had to figure that the party line would dominate and here Gordon has the temerity to suggest that perhaps the Mayor, as God of the budget could share some responsibility.
Andy Ross: Watch the tape if you can get it. From 1-5-06. Ross is such a lackey that he absolutely never gets out of the party line. He doesn’t have the talent or hammer to do so. It was, thus, shocking to him that Gordon, a fellow Chron slave should try and balance the discussion. He does a, vaudeville level double-take when the Chron’s only honest political reporter made her comment. Taylor, seeing the possible damage immediately, moved to defend the Mayor’s 99+% & attack the Board’s ‘add-backs’.
Barbara Taylor: “Yeah, that 1% is their pork-barrel stuff!!” I mean, can you believe this shit? What she calls ‘pork-barrel’ are things like AIDS clinics in the Tenderloin and hospital beds for insane people. The woman is not intellectually fit enough to lead a circle-jerk.
There was a new light in the circle and she makes Mati Hari look like Goldie Hawn. I’m talking about Cecelia Vega, for those of you who haven’t seen her. Is this firecracker the boss’s daughter? Smart. Smoldering. She gave a secret look down the table that was a look that was aimed at Marisa Lagos and came just short of drawing blood. … And, it was a glance!
Lagos was in the middle of Vega’s highway to the stars and that’s a dangerous place to be. It didn’t matter that the Ex’s low-rent stringer wasn’t making any sense. What mattered to Vega & the rest of the viewing public (when content is zero, you gotta consider packaging) … what Vega was noticing was that Lagos was getting away with being clueless because her outside looks good. Whatever.
Solutions that won’t happen
The Chron & Ex are only going to get worse. Hard as that is to believe. Now that Peskin has sold out to Comcast and Home Depot and Google, don’t expect any help from him. It was, in fact, amazing to me that the panel on City Desk ragged on him at all. He’s been the best ally to big business on this Board since his election as Board President. Comcast’s payoff to Peskin was a 30 minute show on District 3 that you really have to see. It features Rose Pak who took time off from arranging torture of Falun Gong, to Steven Cornell, whom Peskin double-crossed (apparently after the video) by providing the deciding vote to bring Home Depot into town. That will only destroy Cornell’s business, but showing that big balls don’t always work for the Lord, Peskin kept the footage of Brownie’s boss praising Peskin in the show.
So, a small move for Perlstein would be to bring Tim Redmond on. And, Matt Smith. And, Randy Shaw. He ain’t gonna do it. He can’t. Editorial content is set way above Jon’s head and it ain’t ‘fair & balanced’. But, check out this Vega, chick. Makes Kimberley look like a shallow bimbo.
Greens endorse Chaos
I’m gonna run this as stream-of-consciousness cause it’s the only way I can get it all down. It all began when I got a note a couple of weeks ago that the ‘Greens’ were going to run a benefit and that Matt Gonzalez was a featured speaker.
Well, Matt wanted to have Todd Chretien, his first pick as a Green candidate against Feinstein to speak. Local Greens, John Marks, Sue Vaughan & Marc Salomon said ‘no’. They didn’t want anyone not endorsed by local Greens to speak. Yet, Aimee Allison was on the speaker list. Not so oddly, the locals have endorsed absolutely no one for office. Kimberley Knox told me that she didn’t plan to endorse any Green candidates for office at any level other than herself and Sarah Lipson for School Board.
As I tried to work through all of this, an older wonk phoned and laughed it off: “The Greens have around 2% of the registered voters and they are run by around 30 people who guard their power religiously. If they let a group like Petroni’s or the ISO to join them, they’d start losing caucus votes in a hurry. They’re not bad people. This is simply their only chance to be in the spotlight in running a political party. They’re process freaks. Great at delays. That keeps the spotlight on them. Problem is, by staying small, they increase the liklihood that their worst fears will be realized. That would be, that some larger group (such as the Democrats did with Ammiano) will join their ranks in a ruse and seize the reins of power. ”
Soooo, point is that the Greens scheduled a fundraiser for … ? Best I can figure, it’s a rent party, cause there are no official candidates invited. Wait, now Krissy Keefer (unannounced Kongressional candidate) says she’s been extended an invitation to speak late in the show. Still, no Chretien. Too late anyway. Gonzo went and scheduled his own event (invited none of the speakers on the list for the first scheduled Green event). If they’ll comp me a ticket and a couple of glasses of 2 buck Chuck, I’ll come.
Matt Gonzalez invites you to a party
( Sometime evening of January 20th, Slim’s on 9th)
Jello Biafra will perform & Daisy Zamora will speak. A benefit for national Green Party candidate, Kevin Zeese who is running for a vacant U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey (or, somewhere like that). … I don’t know if Todd Chretien will speak. I’d hope so. I do know that Matt’s party for the opening of he & Whit’s new office is that same week as is the original Green party fundraiser. I intend to make all 3 and drink heavily to try and gain enlightenment. I know that in the end, the hate of our enemies is greater any differences we may have. All of this conflict may not make any new Greens but, I’m certain it won’t make any new Democrats either. Let’s just call this the season for inter-squad scrimmages. No one does it better than the Greens.
salon today?
yes … 1pm @ La Reina’s
